Monday, November 12, 2012

The shame of the University of London Union

Meet Daniel Cooper, Acting President of the University of London Union, the umbrella students' union for all colleges of the University of London. In this position, Mr Cooper represents some 120,000 students, of diverse beliefs – political and religious. He was invited, in that capacity, by the Senior Anglican Chaplain the Reverend Stephen Williams, to lay a wreath at the University’s Service of Remembrance. He declined to do so ‘on principle’. Setting aside for a moment that Daniel Cooper can’t even spell ‘Remembrance’, below is the letter he sent to explain why he refused to participate:

Dear Reverend Stephen Williams,

Thank you for your invitation to lay a wreath at the University of London remembrance service this Friday, the 9th November. I will pay respect to the millions slaughtered in the First World War, and the many more maimed and killed since. However, I shall not be taking part in the remembrance service. I would like to explain why.

Ordinary people in the UK formed many of the first war veterans’ organisations. For example, the Labour-aligned “National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers” was set up in 1917, campaigning for better war pensions and jobs – excluding officers from membership. The left-Liberal organized “National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers” campaigned under the slogan “justice not charity”. In response, a charity for ex-servicemen was launched in 1921, in opposition to these organisations, and the sale of poppies marked the build-up to Remembrance Day. It is named after Sir Douglas Haig, the British senior officer responsible for the massacre at the battles of the Somme and the Passchendaele. The British Legion continued to veer further to the political right, with figures like Lord Derby taking a lead on its work.

Today the colossal loss of life, misery and suffering is commemorated in a way that doesn’t fit with the reality of what took place in WW1.

Before 1914 there had been no major war for a century. This was the first example in history of “total war”, a break from the hitherto dominant model of state craft and diplomacy. Powerful nations in the foregoing decades had begun an arms race to develop their industrial capacities to unprecedented levels. Modern machinery – machine guns and heavy artillery – were used, transforming the killing potential of weapons. The war has since been described as a ‘hurricane of steel’. The ‘Great War’ was profoundly different because it represented warfare between competing global empires and industrial mass production. As the longest living survivor from WWI, Harry Patch, has noted, the war was “legalised mass murder”. It plunged the world into a chasm of barbarism, industrialised killing and ruin beyond imagination.
The poet Siegred (sic) Sasson (sic) wrote poignantly on the destruction the war caused:

Lines of grey muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!

The war wasn’t an act of liberation, or self defence from despotism, as our leaders today preach. The British Empire feared the growing industrial and military power of imperial Germany. The war that exploded in 1914 was a war to re-divide the world. It was a scramble for colonial possessions, markets and resources amongst the major nations. Young men and women were told that they would be back within 6 weeks of the start of war; their rulers envisaged a quick campaign. But this wasn’t the case – 16 million people losing their lives.

The primary claim by governments at the time, and today, is that the war would be laying claim to our freedoms, and preserving our democratic traditions. But at the same time as the war, most in the UK were not politically enfranchised or even held basic democratic rights, particularly women and working class people.

Internationally the British government played a barbaric role.

The survivors who returned from war faced a desolate world. The economy was depressed, and the recompense for many returning was the poverty of joblessness. Popular loathing against the war came together with class anger against exploitation and hardship. A wave of revolutions followed across Europe, some were limited, and others developed into full blown changes in the status quo, for example in Russia the working class took power.

This legacy is not documented. The Prime Minister David Cameron wants the lessons of the war to remain with us but the dominant narrative on show is one-sided and distorted. It mourns the dead and regrets their loss. But at the same time it exalts their “necessary sacrifice”. The war was terrible, the argument goes, but the price was worth paying.

Cameron deems Friday’s remembrance should be a “to capture our national spirit” and display “national pride”, this is the same sentiment as the purported challenge to accepted national values trumpeted by war politicians in the lead up to 1914 . Today the military and monarchy stand tall at the front of the day of remembrance.

Mourning the butchery of thousands of ordinary people through an act of remembrance side by side with the inheritors of an economic system which created the war is not something I wish to take part in. It is an insult to those sent to die, victims of the self interested advancement of the British Empire.

Karl Liebknecht, a German parliamentarian who voted against war credits, was one of thousands from many countries who spoke out against war. There were mass demonstrations in opposition in many countries. Liberknecht was later imprisoned for arguing that the main enemy is at home, not against our brothers and sisters abroad. He is absolutely right!

We should instead remember the internationalists and socialists. We should remember the figures like Karl Kraus, one of many poets and satirists, who denounced the war. We should remember the soldiers that downed tools to build relationships with each other.

I mourn and remember the dead. But my mourning is mixed with bitter anger against the rulers and the system that create such bloodshed.

Best,
Daniel

‘Best’? If this really is his best, his academic tutor would have no choice but to fail him. He has made the most elementary of undergraduate errors – he has read a few books which accord with his personal beliefs, affirm his prejudice, and now he refuses to budge from his thesis. If he be a student of history, he fails at the most fundamental level; if of politics, he displays no latitude of understanding. As if to confirm his myopia, he announces to the ULU student body:

If you want to discuss these issues further, I am organizing a meeting in ULU on Thursday 17 November at 7pm in room 3C to give an alternative, socialist, account of the war and remembrance. Details here: http://www.facebook.com/events/268424839941983/

An alternative socialist account?

Remembrance Sunday is neither a celebration of war nor an affirmation of the righteousness of government. It does not condone politics or justify economics. It is not a moral statement of national superiority. Remembrance Sunday is to honour those who paid the ultimate price in defence of democracy; who served to sustain our traditions and values; who died that we might be free.

Daniel Cooper appears to have no understanding that the Chaplain’s invitation was not to him personally, but to the Office he holds: it is the task of the President of the ULU to represent the student body; not to use the title as a means of furthering one’s personal political beliefs.

As he rants on about Haig and the economics of World War 1, he appears to forget every other armed conflict since. Could he not have laid his wreath in memory of the victims of Nazism? Argentine fascism? Northern Ireland terrorism? Iraq? Afghanistan? While he spouts his puerile polemic, more British soldiers – his age – are dying each day so that he has the freedom to study, earn a degree and get a job – all without being bombed on the underground or having himself to strive for peace.

If he had so wished, he could simply have laid a wreath to remember the unlived lives on all sides of the darkness of conflict. He could have remembered that many of them had no choice – they were the despairing pawns in an ugly world intent on mass destruction.

Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are they who contend for peace at great personal cost. Blessed are they whose sacrifice yields stability and greater harmony. Blessed are they who suffer violence and lonely death in order that we might love, forgive and heal. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Whatever Daniel Cooper’s personal beliefs about WWI, he should have had the maturity to realise that he represents 120,000 individuals, citizens of the world, who looked to him for leadership. We may all be committed to finding non-violent resolutions to conflict – personal, local, national and international – but by refusing to lay a wreath of remembrance, Daniel Cooper has refused to honour the victims who no longer have a voice: he pontificates with selfish words where there should be silence; he parades his own ego where there should be humility.

And his excuse is ‘socialist truth’, which he insists will reconcile, heal and answer the deepest challenges facing us. It will inspire enemies to speak to one another, the estranged to join hands in friendship, and warring nations to seek the way of peace. How little he truly knows of human nature and the socialist worldview.

Daniel Cooper ought to be removed from his position as Acting President of the ULU, for he has brought both the Union and the University disrepute. If you wish to support those students who find his behaviour ‘disgusting’, please sign their Facebook petition.

207 Comments:

Even if he felt the service was glorifying this image of war, he is being a selfish and arrogant boy.

This is supposed to be one of the few days in the year that, irrespective of belief, nationality, race and anything else; we all come together to express our gratitude. If he is in a elected positon, he should adhere to those responsibilities and traditions.

This letter is of course typical of those who are elected to posts without any understanding of the teal purpose of that post. The duty of a post holder is to represent those people who elected the post holder and on formal occasions such as this to represent those people, something that doesn't seem to have entered his tiny mind. If he felt so strongly that he could not carry out the duty, he should have sent a deputy which would have been quite in order.I don't support the war in Afghanistan, but that didn't prevent me from doing my duty as one of the local bell-ringers and ringing the parish church's half muffled bells prior to the service at the our war memorial, nor standing outside with the biggest crown I've seen for quite a few years.People who can't see the difference between Glorifying War and Honouring the Dead are hardly likely to be able to produce a logical thesis as part of their degree studies.

You'll be aware that another young man has been arrested for posting a picture of a burning paper poppy. Did millions of conscripted men die for this too?

For the first time in my adult life I didn't wear a poppy this year. My grandfather, who brought me up, spent 3 years in Changi and my grandmother was a nurse in both WW1 and WW2. The rhetoric has moved far away from "What passing bells for these who die as cattle?" to "Our Brave Lads Saving Us All From Them Muslims."

The tragic deaths of people who volunteered to fight in needless skirmishes are not honoured by sentimentality and glorification of uniforms. Personally, I don't object to people buying and wearing poppies, in the greater scheme of things I'm glad that the British Legion exists. And we need to recalibrate our national approach to Remembrance, remembering that war turns young men into red mist or leaves them mad and homeless where we despise them.

"People who can't see the difference between Glorifying War and Honouring the Dead are hardly likely to be able to produce a logical thesis as part of their degree studies."

You'd probably not be surprised to learn that it is not uncommon for there to be questions about academic standing with regard to sabbatical election candidates and paid positions on student councils. There are some excellent, thoughtful, and hard working students in positions of leadership, but my observation has been that they are very often outnumbered by feckless ideologues and narcissists, who by-and-large go on into politics.

If I might be permitted to speak in Mr Cooper's defence, though, I should say that it is highly probable that he is in fact representing the views, however ignorantly arrived at, of a substantial portion of his electors. Do not discount the possibility than in behaving as he does, Mr Cooper is in fact living up to the platform on which he was elected.

Finally, misguided as I believe his decision to be, I have to say I have some sympathy with his concern regarding the nature of commemoration of the dead. As someone who utterly rejects the profound moral evil of indescriminate warfare, I do not hold it to be disloyal to the memory of those who died to insist that the victorious sides be held to account for their conduct in war. However, Remembrance Sunday is not the day to do so. Nor is the place to do so the Cenotaph.

It is so disappointing that these people are able to stand up and say they are able to represent me, as a University of London student, and my views, especially given they were elected on a turnout of less than 1%

I know student politics is pointless, but I wish we would care a little more when voting.

Perhaps this ignorant young man might like to blame the Belgiums. If they hadn’t resisted the German invasion, the British cabinet would have been overwhelmingly against joining the war. And, in any case four of them did resign.

The phrase that jumped out at me from his letter was "in Russia the working class took power."

So the idea that the armed coup led by Lenin which led to a bloody Civil War the establishment of the USSR and the dictatorship of Stalin was "the working class" taking power still exists. I was astonished, has this student never heard of the Cheka, the Gulags, the Berlin Wall. It's like reading the sort of left wing drivel that I thought had died out after the invasion of Czecholsovakia

1. The memorial services are about both the world wars and in many cases, such as ours, we also remember those who have fought in the conflicts since WWII up to the present.

2. I know of no memorial service which seeks to glorify war as an adventure. In fact it is honouring the ordinary man who fought for his country, the very people whom he claims to speaking for (although in The Great War, I admit that the Junior officers suffered as a proportion of troop losses, as they were trained to lead their men from the front).

3. There are memorials the length of breadth of this country, every village, town and city. Read the names and contemplate the scale of the destruction. Even in villages that had populations of less than a thousand, you often get at least a dozen names, often families, who died.

4.He is entitled to his ideological views. That is afterall what people died to protect, especially in the second great war. Think on that Mr Cooper.

5. The statement of Britain being 'barbaric' and the discussion on Russia. Yes the socialist revolution in Russia. In which the royal family was killed in cold blood, even their children. Then the bloody civil war. Then the genocide, following the socialist dogma of collective agriculture. On balance, I know which country I would rather support with my intellectual faculties.

6. Disagreeing with the wars or even being a pacifist does not mean that you cannot remember those people who fought. In respect of the pacifists, many of them had courage, serving as stretcher bearers and other non combatant roles.

His self-righteous attitude is offensive enough, but the fact that his understanding of World War I is such total and utter bullsh**, gleaned from reading nothing but a few war poets, Alan Clark's thoroughly discredited "The Donkeys", and watching Blackadder Goes Forth; that really is beyond the pale.

Britain and France feared German ambitions in 1914, as in 1939, with very good reason. Imperial Germany was not a benign constitutional monarchy, but a military dictatorship in all but name. Many of the attitudes which would later characterise the Nazi government were present in the Kaiser's government - in Germany's war aims, issued in 1916 when they thought they were winning, Belgium was to be annexed, ethnically cleansed, and resettled by Germans; France was to hand over the Atlantic Coast to German control; a German-dominated customs union - Mitteleuropa - was to be created (this one sounds eerily familiar); the fate of the Nama and Herero peoples before the war is another good example. Germany launched a bid for the domination of Europe, which Britain and France had no choice but to resist with all their strength.

And as for his description of Haig - utter rubbish. Haig developed and commanded the largest, best equipped and best trained fighting force that this country has ever produced; the First World War British Army was much larger than its Second World War counterpart. Also, Britain was engaged in the main theatre of war with the main enemy continuously for almost 4 years, which we were not in WWII - a better comparison for casualty figures would be Germany v. Soviet Union.

At times during Montgomery's advance across Normandy, or during the advance up Italy, when conditions often resembled those of WWI, casualty rates were similar to or worse than those sustained at the Somme and Passchendaele, but the numbers were much lower because we had far fewer troops engaged for less time.

Britain had to fight in World War I; it was as much a war for survival as WWII. Of course mistakes were made - they always are in war; look at the Dieppe Raid or Arnhem - but Haig does not deserve the vilification that has been heaped upon him, and belongs in a list of the greatest Generals this country has ever produced.

Unfortunately the rot in student politics has been permitted to fester almost to the point of despair. Although there is a large cohort of unpleasant hard-left types (many of whom have to "moderate" their views when moving up into Labour) who gain a platform otherwise denied to them elsewhere in society, the truth is that many conservative and liberal candidates are equally worthy of despair.

I have come to the conclusion that those best suited for leadership are generally to be found spending their time applying themselves to their studies whilst at university, and consequently only infrequently on the chamber floor. It's probably best to think of most SUs as being the holding pen for Sixth Form debating society rejects - albeit with budgetary responsibilities.

This fellow exemplifies the extent to which Marxist ideology has commandeered decent Labour values and how the fanaticism of that agenda is poisoning our culture. His socialist world view presumably excludes the hundreds of millions that have died at its hands.Even five yeaars ago, I suggest, he would not have dared air such a view. Emboldened by the march of the anti Christ through our once solid Chistian mores, he and his ilk dare more.His outburst reminded me of the Milibands' father whom after fleeing to England to escape the nazis took an immediate swipe at the nationalistic English and hoped we would lose the war.

His youth explains his vigour but I fear Englishmen who use the freedoms dearly bought to hack away at the foundations of the society that has buit them.

The growing ignorance and confusion about Remembrance Sunday shows just how important it is to keep celebrating it. As a local vicar, I almost found myself sidelined by a local group who wanted a non-denominational act of remembrance to make it more inclusive. Exactly the same kind of muddled ideology was there at work too. I wonder what the people whose 100 names are listed on our roll of honour would make of all this.

Your Grace, don't be too hard on young Coop. A giddy school boy who styles himself as a commie to get attention and a bit of loose tail at Hormone U. The real commies were quite efficient at assessing the value of such "men." They would've skewerd him on their bayonets and used him as barricade stuffing.

PS, Your Grace, I hope that the Reverend Williams resists the presures of the convention to respond with reasoned argument to this Epistle of Young Coop and files it in one his bulging banker's boxes of similar drivel.

Perhaps we should have a Day of Remembrance for all those millions exterminated in the twentieth century by communist regimes, armies and guerillas?The millions shot against walls, hanged in prisons after show trials or no trials, sent to gulags, shot trying to climb out of East Berlin, slaughtered in the Chinese civil war and the Cultural Revolution, left to starve by dogmatists, massacred in their millions by Pol Pot - how about a wreath for them?Than maybe Daniel Cooper would turn up.Whoops - don't forget to include the homosexuals shot by Che Guevara, they were also victims of communist fervour. There is no need to call what he is saying "drivel" or descend to rude language. "Biassed" is sufficient.

PS I see nothing wrong with a non-denominational act of remembrance. In fact I welcome it. People of all religions or none fought for the British/Allied side in both wars and this is no moment to be petty or intolerant surely?

Beg to differ, Ms Gasper. I dutifully re-read Young Coop's epistle in deference to your recommendation for critical re-classification, but remain firmly convinced that I used the word "drivel" selectively and with an admirable show of self-control at the cost of avoiding more apt terms, such as ones relating to by-products of common bodily functions.

No major wars in the 19th Century? Well there were a great many other wars, some with heavy losses. In fact it is difficult to find a year without a war somewhere in the world, or is he talking only about that small patch called Western Europe? Well, the Franco-Prussian War wasn't that big, although it was important. Looking around the world there were a lot of very damaging wars with major losses. He is both ignorant and silly.

Ah, Lord Lavendon, ever the gentleman peace-maker; an excellent suggestion. Just visited Ms Gasper's blog and found much I agree with; I recommend it to all good conservatives here. Unfortunately, I became transfixed with a bit of trivia, a pic with Tony Blair in it where he is wearing a blue sweater which appears faded in colour at the bottom. As an amateur knitter (simple scarves, learning tassels), I'm now obsessed with the mystery of whether Tony's sweater was bleached after being made or whether the knitter used a special yarn. My mind is a funny thing sometimes.

I don't think it would be right or democratic to compel this person to lay a wreath against his conscience, however corrupt his conscience may be. But surely someone else from the Union could have come forward? In not doing so, they all make themselves complicit in Cooper's act of disrespect.

Your Grace excluded many of those that should be remembered on Remembrance Day.

"Remembrance Sunday is to honour those who paid the ultimate price in defence of democracy; who served to sustain our traditions and values; who died that we might be free."

Indeed. But Remembrance Sunday is to remember (not to honour in all cases) everyone who died as a result of war. All wars. All deaths. No execeptions.

Including deserters executed for cowardice. Including vicious killers who were assassinated by brave freedom-fighters.* Including the victims of deliberate campaigns of torture, mass murder and genocide.

The great lesson of WWI is that war kills the good alongside the evil and does not discriminate in their death.

That a lefty cannot acknowledge that simplest possible statement that death is bad is a sign that he has jumped entirely off the deep end. That he might want to drag the process back to remembrance of all who have died - yes, that is a worthy goal. Let him do that and not what he did, which was to dishonour all who died.

*Having reread that sentence before posting, it's perhaps not obvious that I was thinking specifically Reynhard Heidrich and generally of the Gestapo killed by the Resistance and not of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan, so I've added this note to clarify.

As I understand it, the man is no longer acting president, he has been replaced with an elected figure. Unfortunately, this elected president is now using his position to defend his predecessor's actions without even the good faith to come out and admit that he holds the selfsame ideology.

Very cross with the whole thing. First ideological claptrap, then, as it became clear that a vast proportion of the student body dissented from and resented the omission made in their name, hand-wringing and infantile and obtuse arguments on the nature of representation, of plebiscite, and of freedom of conscience.

Daniel Cooper, like so many "activists", is a preacher-manque'; he feels he has a message from a Higher Power, a Greater, Transcendent Truth, which he must deliver because it will Save the World. I suspect that, like many actual clergy, he feels you should give him tax breaks for his Prophetic Ministry-since he has some University position, he probably expects to cling to the public teat until he goes, as they used to say, to his reward.

As I understand it, the man is no longer acting president, he has been replaced with an elected figure. Unfortunately, this elected president is now using his position to defend his predecessor's actions without even the good faith to come out and admit that he holds the selfsame ideology.

Very cross with the whole thing. First ideological claptrap, then, as it became clear that a vast proportion of the student body dissented from and resented the omission made in their name, hand-wringing and infantile and obtuse arguments on the nature of representation, of plebiscite, and of freedom of conscience.

As I understand it, the man is no longer acting president, he has been replaced with an elected figure. Unfortunately, this elected president is now using his position to defend his predecessor's actions without even the good faith to come out and admit that he holds the selfsame ideology.

Very cross with the whole thing. First ideological claptrap, then, as it became clear that a vast proportion of the student body dissented from and resented the omission made in their name, hand-wringing and infantile and obtuse arguments on the nature of representation, of plebiscite, and of freedom of conscience.

Mr Cooper didn't mention the fact British and American expeditionary forces fought the Red Army and the Bolsheviks in the newly created USSR from 1918-1920 to try and rescue an army of over 40,000 Czechs who were also fighting the Bolsheviks along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Over 5,000 Americans were sent to Arkhangelsk, Russia in 1919. All of this must make the very sensitive Mr. Cooper feel very uncomfortable about the "abuse" his beloved USSR suffered at the hands of his government back then. Another reason for him not to lay a wreath at the University’s Service of Remembrance.

In I'm sure Mr. Cooper and his ilk would have no scruples laying a wreath at the grave of the great saint of the Socialist and Communist cult, Karl Marx, on his birthday next May.

Comrade Cooper:

Here is his present address:

Karl Marx

Highgate Cemetary

Swain's Lane North London.

After you and your pals lay a wreath there drive down to the coast and pay homage to another Communist saint by throwing a wreath into the English Channel.

Friedrich Engels

He also died in England. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered off Beachy Head near Eastbourne at his request.

A few things he needs to know. If he had adopted his stance in post war Russia, he’d have been in big trouble. Add another big if Uncle Joe was still around.

You see nitwit, they called WW2 the great patriotic war. Defeating evil fascism. It’s the nearest they got to anything being holy. Snub that and a gulag was waiting for you.

Did you know the gulag victims were mainly people who spoke out like yourself Cooper. You had to tow the line in the USSR and keep your big mouth shut. Only the ‘approved’ could voice an opinion. The last thing these revolutionaries wanted was another bloody agitator. Dangerous people, agitators. They got the communists to where they got to, and they were bloody well right to fear new ones. After all, decades of workers paradise could have been undone by counter revolutionaries, or those fellows who believed the revolution hadn’t gone far enough, the revisionists. So, after a few show trials in the 1930s, they were all put up against a wall ! You didn’t hear a squeak from anyone after that...

One can imagine young Cooper pleading “But I am a good communist, it’s just that I don’t think we should be remembering capitalist wars, is all” as the NKVD men threw him into a railway freight van for despatch to Siberia. The prisoners were starved on their journey. The idea being to deliver them in a worse condition than the existing gulag inmates. To depress the poor bastards already there. Resourceful prisoners might find a gap in the van floor where they could scrap up a little axle grease. Anything to keep the hunger pangs down. All this in an un-insulated rail truck in sub zero Russia. There must have been times when the train arrived and most of the luckless people had frozen to death.

His stated reason for avoiding the ceremony and your reason for agreeing with "at least some of what he says" are not the same.

The salient parts of his refusal are that "captur[ing] our national spirit" and displaying "national pride" are prima facie wrong - he's quite explicit that these are necessarily "the same sentiment as [those]...trumpeted by war politicians in 1914"; and that he will not participate in an act of remembrance "side by side with the inheritors of an economic system which created the war". Note the implication: the economic system was what led to the war and its inheritors are culpable for maintaining it.

This is no simple objection to jingoism, something I sometimes agree with and tolerate even where I do not agree. This reeks of ideology. he's put a lot more stuff in the public domain, so I think it's fine to look at that too. He emerges as an apologist for the October (not the February, the October) Revolution, as well as some other quite unsavoury views.

Again, even his holding this ideology in and of itself isn't something I resent. But his abusing an office of trust to which he was not even elected as a platform from which to trumpet his minority opinion is unconscionable.

HMOG!Russell Group and privately educated? Much too dim for a grammar school boy or state over achiever.

I had to endure a primary school teacher lecture me on the inherent beauty and primacy of Eid in her school calendar. Upon asking about the poppy and Rememberance Day, she replied in the negative,why glorify war?

Even if one despised the Political and military systems that contributed towards the World Wars then one could have laid a wreath as a mark of compassion towards all those who gave their lives so that we could live our lives in freedom.

'Socialist truth' and the false hope that socialism will lead to some sort of 'Utopia' is a failed philosophy.The inherent problem with Humanity(which is the 'fallen nature' of man ) ) can only be solved through God`s plan for redemption which is effected through Jesus Christ.

DanJ0. You are a surface individual are you not. A here today and gone tomorrow type. No appreciation of history and the lives of those who went before. Most nauseating of all is your pretence of pseudo intellectuality and your self satisfying posts on this blog, as if you, of all people, count for anything.

You’re in a bit of a tizz tonight DanJ0. You desperately need to read about the historical times you are posting about, as does Cooper, who might need to ask his parents what a book is. Of course, you will soon realise the world doesn’t revolve around you. After putting up with you for a year, even this man needs reassuring that’s the case from time to time...

Red sky at night, Shepherd's Delight; red sky in the morning, shepherds take warning.Thank you Your Grace, for publicising this case.

The boy's "revolution" displays fruition of the deconstructive Communist stages: Demoralisation and Destabilisation. To that methodology we owe the fact that many of our young reject the land and culture their fathers built and saved for them --over a space of nigh on 10,000 years.

So well done all today who seek to reveal what alternatives these benighted children face... beyond the masquerade. Thanks especially to Darter Noster for contextualising a more balanced version of the complex history.

May Light dawn.

_______As to sound... I can only reiterate what every Britishcooper should already know: Empty barrels* make most noise.

Does anyone know who the Cambridge 4 (possibly 5) were? If so they are back again, reincarnated in the likes of this sneering brat and his ilk in his obnoxious statement insulting the brave young men who died for their country (many countries,) during WW I. Mr. Cooper correct saying WW I was a needless war between competing global empires and industrial mass production. But he is totally wrong insulting the memory of the those were drafted by their countries to die in that terrible War.

The Cambridge 4 (or 5 as others are suspected to be the fifth member of this group are:

Guy Burgess

Donald Macclean

Kim Philby

Anthony Blunt

The term "Cambridge" in the name Cambridge Five refers to the conversion of the group to communism during their education at Cambridge University in the 1930s. They joined other "intellectuals" who sneered at those who fought in WW I. The four known members all attended the university, as did the alleged fifth man, Cairncross. Debate surrounds the exact timing of their recruitment by Soviet intelligence; Anthony Blunt claimed that they were not recruited as agents until they had graduated. Blunt, a Fellow of Trinity College, was several years older than Burgess, Maclean, and Philby; he acted as a talent-spotter and recruiter.

Both Blunt and Burgess were members of the Apostles, an exclusive and prestigious society based at Trinity and King's Colleges. John Cairncross, long suspected of having been the 'Fifth Man', and formally identified as a Soviet agent in 1990, was also an Apostle.

Other Apostles accused of having spied for the Soviets include Michael Whitney Straight, Victor Rothschild and Guy Liddell.

All of these young men came from wealth and privilidge and betrayed their country for their beloved USSR while still enjoying the perks of their upper class families and social connections. Kim Philby rose to in MI6 working at the British Embassy in Washington , DC in the late 1940's.

Anthony Blunt was Professor of the History of Art at the University of London, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, Surveyor of the King's Pictures and London. He was exposed as a member of the Cambridge Five, a group of spies working for the Soviet Union from some time in the 1930s to at least the early 1950s.

Philby, Maclean, and Burgess caused enormous damage to British and American national securuty during and after WW II and all theree of these human rats defected in the 1950's and in the case of Philby in the early 1960's to spend the rest of their msierable treacherous lives in the USSR.

Maclean, Burgess, and Blunt were well know Gays. Philby was bisexual and others like Victor Rothschild were openly Gay.

The Cambridge 4 are back in their modern incarnations in the "Occupy Movement" and in the likes of Mr. Cooper.

I fear the sectarian nature of some exchages, (mea culpa), and the personal attacks on individuals, (mea maxima culpa), just got to him in the end. I do hope he returns.

Its good to have you here showing others that Catholicism is followed by those other than: The Little Brainless Catholic Coterie.

And I must strongly disagree with your assessment of DanJ0's literary talents.

The title he dubbed us Catholics with does not reflect reality. Plus it just lacks literary merit. There's no literation; rhythm or beat. Even with him fronting a band decked out in fabulous gold lame hot pants, it would fail.

Catholics are so much more than a mere coterie - this is too gay (mean stupid) an expression. We are Cooperators in Truth, to borrow a now redundant heraldic expression.

Privileged to be Union President of my London college, but equally ashamed to be alongside Mr. Cooper in the sphere of student politics. Sadly - and perhaps unsurprisingly - London's student unions are disproportionately crammed with raving Trotskyites like our 'beloved' Mr Cooper. He may have done some reading, but it'll take a lot more than 'Socialism for Dummies' to justify such a naive disregard for those who gave up everything. We should be remembering the glorious dead, not using them as an excuse to wheel out our A-Level essay skills.

Anyone should have valued the opportunity to honour the dead on behalf of London students. Mr Cooper's position as a 'representative' ought to be thought about very seriously indeed...

But we must be fair to Danj0, you failed to append "The Inspector's" to your recitation. The rhythm would nonetheless be a little off, so try adding the prefix "Roman"

we get: The Inspector's Little Brainless Roman Catholic Coterie

I think the words said aloud have an undeniable charm. And that we might use it in jest and humility would be no insult to our religion.

More seriously, Danj0

Having thought about it I think that even the ideology the acting president espoused isn't at the heart of the problem here. We are all perhaps a little conservative here by dint of being drawn to His Grace's blog, and so we're bound to find the things this chap believes a little repellent.

But let's allow for the sake of argument that perhaps, if you really believed that the World Wars were all senseless barbarity and that the official Remembrance Service was infested with Jingoism, that even if you were to tell yourself that you were attending only to pay respects to the dead, your conscience would still be pricked by the feeling you were compromising with this evil ideology that was justifying or glorifying war. Let's allow him that for the sake of charity.

Even then, he should have realised that he was not going as an individual, but as a representative in his office. And that he could not refuse to go, but could only refuse to go as a representative in his office. So that, even if he felt the need to answer his conscience, he was duty-bound, in order not to fail in his office of representing others, to open the way for someone to go in his place.

Instead, he refused to go not just as a man but as an office, thereby insulting the majority he represented, who disagreed with him, and turning the thing from a matter of personal principle to a misuse of his office in promoting his minority ideology.

I do believe you are perhaps referring to the official surrender of France and the occupation of North France by Germany and the repulsive reigme of Vichy France? But even in that dark hour, there were people willing to resist the tyrant and fight for a free France -and Europe.

I have no idea where DanJ0's comments went, and not having seen any of the subsequent ones, I can't much comment - but his initial point that one might express concern over the way in which remembrance might become something politicized in the present day, was to my mind perfectly sound.

As I said above, I don't much think Mr Cooper demonstrated either tact or a particularly informed grasp of history, but that is not to say that his actions were entirely without merit.

Setting aside the fact that it is intended to be set up in opposition to conventional remembrance (which I think is just plain wrong), his desire to memorialise the history of working class soldiers is not by any means a bad one. I would, of course, dispute entirely his historiographical perspective, not least because very few working class people are remotely Marxist, but in less contentious circumstances, I'd have been happy to attend such a meeting.

Before and after the disgraceful surrender of France to the Nazi's in June 1940 with their Army officers fleeing south in confiscacted cars along with their fellow deserters, whores, and lots of wine while honking their horns to clear the roads clogged with refugees the honor of France was later saved by the French Resistance and many French civilians as well as priests and nuns who organized networks to save downed Allied pilots and aircrews. Many of these brave souls who helped get our pilots to the Spanish border, then to Portugal, and back to England to fly another day against the Third Reich were French and Belgian women. A high % lost their lives.

These ladies were cool as cucumbers playing the role of wives or girlfriends of these aairmen going through Germany Army roadblocks and checkpoints or making excuses so the airmen and pilots who did not speak French wouldn't have to speak while tickets and papers were being checked on trains by German Gestapo agents and Vichy French police.

Interesting thought, AIB @ 00.41: his desire to memorialise the history of working class soldiers is not by any means a bad one.

It is not that the project wouldn't produce some wonderful stories; we've all heard some of those. My problem is that to accentuate "socio-economic" stratification is to feed the essential Marxist Agenda: it is propaganda in praxis. It's their principal ploy for dividing the British against each other and I say they've both exaggerated and exacerbated the situation.

I mean: how many of us here look at others and decide whether to bother-on the basis of class? I don't. Mind you, nothing could make me want to associate with certain politicians or journalists, whatever their "status."

No. And our closer-knit pre-Reformation society was already mixing the three 'estates.' While priests and knights retained land inherited from those who'd wrested them from indigenes, societal identity also reflected a person's work (as many of our surnames show). As you know, each estate contributed and participated in skills on which the others depended. Crafts, the goods we produced for trade, and trade itself, led to social mobility, despite our racial roots. Chaucer, for example, was from a family of wine-merchants. However French they were, though, even his marriage into the aristocracy didn't blind him to the truth about knights, or merchants.

So we worked, painfully and for a long time, to even out some of the divisions and injustices. Why would we want to re-accentuate them now?

Is it for the same reason that our Neu Masters have decimated the ancient institution of Grammar Schools (a traditional means of equalisation)? Is it that the enemy wants to ensure that we have no recourse to well-organised military resources? Might they perhaps believe that all we need is a shrieking, rabid, ignorant, revolutionary rabble that doesn't know how to plough a field, or make a brick?

----------------So me: I like our way of memorialising. We honour, equally, all who sacrificed themselves. We don't value one more than another because he or she was born in the biggest house in the city.

And, even before they died, people like Vera Lynn didn't sing just for the aristos. When they took their trains and ships to wherever, all the audience responded to the words of "We'll Meet Again."

OiGPassinate?Like murdering all the inhabitants of Beziers?Or killing & torturing the Huguenots?Or raping & enslaving children in Ireland?Yeah.

John MageeCorrect as to facts.I disagree as to motive.They did not see it a s betraying their country (even though they were) but as aspiring to the higher ideals of the communist religion.Much like the RC traitors who tried to kill Gloriana, & did kill Cranmer!

Which brings us back to the repulsive toad of a v-p of ULU.The religious tone of his utter twaddle is unmistakable, I'm afraid, as is the complete disconnect with reality.

You DO realise, I hope that almost nobody votes for these people, & now ULU is trying to throw them out of their student Union offices, for good reason.

Little changes in the nature of students' unions.The same Marxist nonsense is trotted out in every generation

In 1933 a far more dramatic statement was made when the Oxford Union declared it would not fight for "King and Country." This at a time when any who had eyes to see could predict the progression of the Nazi menace.Then, as now was the happy land of Russia invoked.Again, the wisdom of the working class alluded to.No, nothing has changed; but in the light of history ignorance is less forgivable now than then.

Mr. Cooper is an idiot. Plain and simple. He is class riddled and little more than a cypher of the left. Does he not know that the British officer corps suffered far higher casualties than the rank and file? Or that the Russian revolution lead to more misery and death than any other social reversal before or since?

The end of the university system, as it is today, is in sight. Another ten years and it will be obvious to all.

A word in fairness to the French.In the few months of fighting prior to their surrender the French lost nearly 300,000 men.The French may eat garlic in bed and are grossly arrogant but they are a brave noble people who don't deserve the contempt visited on them.

You're right, and I quite understood what I would be in for. Alas, it would probably not be too far removed from what is often taught in the lecture halls these days. However, I am of the mind that there is nothing to be lost by engaging others in the matter of history - especially when it is clear that their own view is more heavily influenced by an ideology than it is engagement with evidence.

My usual answer to such things is to respond with documents and artefacts, to rehearse the lives of the dead in all their complex strangeness. Very often, the rhetoric being employed is "this is the truth" - so one merely has to explore the evidence and ask, "is it?". If after all that that, they still prefer their neat ideas of the past, if they shrug their shoulders and say their model is worthy above such mundane objections, then we can ignore their claims to possess a firm or evidential basis in history for their views.

History is the fondest-held of all religions, for it whispers promises of security in the present. We would rather believe in a force of history that promises to overthrow the things we don't like (qua Marxists), or the idea that we are the pinnacle of an ameliorating Enlightenment, released from the shackles of superstition (qua Liberals). The fact that such ideas have always been more about the present than the past, more to do with how we want to perceive ourselves than seek how those who went before understood things, sometimes means that the most fervent believers will not exchange what they can hold, grab, or destroy now for the disquieting and immaterial shades of what was. They thought they were in the present too.

I wonder if your Jesus would approve of you being so spiteful to people? But then you don't really believe do you? You are just attached to Catholicism for the culture, as I do recall you justifying knocking off your Anglican boyfriend,at the same time as attacking gay sex. How hypocritical.

That post clearly confirms that you are quite a homophobic person. Poor you. I wonder how all your trendy poets cope with that knowledge.

I haven't been able to read the lesbian handbook because you've been too busy taking notes from it.

You know, you really are getting quite childish now. I would ask how old you are, but I know you have difficulty counting that far.

The disgraceful collapse of the French Army in 1940 aside. The Allies owe a hudge debt of gratitude to the French Resistance and the people of France (and Belguim & Holland) for saving the lives of thousands of Allied pilots and aircrews by keeping them in safe houses, providing them with fake papers and travel documents, and disguises to get them through endless checkpoints at train stations and road blocks from Paris south to the Spainish border, then to Portugal, and eventually back to England to fly missions once again against the Third Reich. Many of these brave souls were women who sometimes traveled with our airmen on trains pretending to be their wives or girlfriends to help men who could not speak French bluff the Gestapo and the Vichy French police.

These courageous ladies were cool as cucumbers in these situations!

Ever hear of the brave Serbian Draza Mihailovich who's guerrillas after the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941 saved the lived of at least 500 Allied air crews?

He was betrayed by MI6 double agents like Kim Philby who helped frame Mihailovich as having pro-Nazi sympathies (a total lie) and others to successfully switch Allied aid from Yugoslav nationalists in favor of the Communist resistance leader and pro Soviet future leader of Yugoslavia Josip Tito.

'Your Jesus' used to be yours too for a few weeks.You have been Jewish for quite a few months now Anna Anglican Hannah Yiddisha. Surely it's time for you to move on.How about the Morman faith.They have a good choir.Find a use for that big mouth of yours.

I do not agree with the nature of cressida's personal attacks on you or your uncle, who I have grown to respect. Not necesarily for what she says. I often make equally hurtful remarks to others. What I disagree with is the obvious negative and painful impact it is having on you and all your family. It is proving uphelpful.

If you followed cressida's comments from the start, as I have, you will understand that above all things she cannot tolerate what she sees as anything less than total commitment and dedication to the faith one espouses.

Her earlier posts to Albert showed an awe and respect for Catholic teaching that she indicated she could not possibly measure up to and some she could not agree with. She has remained 'out of communion' with Rome because of this. As a result, she challenges anybody who shows half-hearted commitment or an acceptance of modernisation or liberalism in Christianity.

This is why she goes for you. And this is why I advised you to withdraw from exchanges with her. Your own faith is still emerging - be it Judaism or Christianity. Your soul is too precious to risk your faith being crushed before it has a chance to flower. There are too many issues you still need to work through in an environment that is supportive.

Do you remember one of your first posts on Cranmer? It was a Hannah Anglican's 39 Theses against Catholicism! And then, as an Anglican, you announced you supported active homosexuality.

I do have an understanding of cressida and where she is coming from - and some empathy with her. You may disapprove of me because of this but it does not mean I disapprove of you or that what she says to you is accurate.

Of course you must do what you think right. But there is really no reason for you to leave this weblog over Cressida. In truth you must respect someone before you give his opinion any weight. Her statements do not warrant such measure of respect. She is a sharp-tongued viper - poison without substance. She is the mob that shaved the heads of helpless French women after the war. She deserves your pity. Once you see her in this light, then she no longer has any power to hurt or injure.

There are more present here that would miss you rather than Cressida. Don't forget that.

Just saw the developments here. No you're not. No, you may not abandon your station here, Miss Hannah. Pick up that rifle and resume your post, young lady. As you may have noticed, we all have our hobgoblins and it seems this is the place to give them a run. A fairly nice place too, with a tall fence to keep us all from soiling the grounds outside.

PS, Besides, Miss Hannah. think of me. If you leave, I'll be the sole Yid on this site. Who will watch my back and who will defend me when that horrible brute, Corrigan1, bullies me again? I'm a sensitive soul, you know.

In a nutshell De Nova suffers from self esteem issues and therefore projects that onto other people, as a self appointed grand inquisitor of the Church, and 'goes after' gay Jews in particular for being liberal or modern in their faith. Even though at the same time she claims to be 'out of communion' with the very same church?

You should be careful whom you call a Nazi. My father fought harder for France than the whole of French manhood. And he was only in your country for six weeks before he was almost killed. I do admit however that fighting harder than "the whole of French manhood" isn't much of a standard.

Lord Lavendon, your interpretation of my earlier comment was not quite what I had in mind when I penned it.

I really do not want to enter this particular skirmish or take sides. However, I do agree with Avi. This blog is for all and one can expect a rough ride on occassions.

As for Car, well, as a former leader of soldiers, men and women, you show remarkably little insight to what's going on. Why this need to rescue fair damsels in distress? You threatened me with a shotgun for allegedly making lewd comments! How is your daughter going to fair in her chosen profession? I suggest you Goggle 'Drama Triangle' and focus in particular on the 'persecutor-victim-rescuer' dynamic.

There's a saying in Scotland - "Let the wind blow on their face". It is said to over-protective parents who want to shield their children from the harsh realities of life.

Hannah is a 26 year old woman. She can stand up for herself - in her own manner. She should not engage in verbal fencing and attempt to beat her adversary at her own game.

By the way, I hope both Cressida and Hannah stay and just keep their distance for a time.

Right chaps. Time to hand in all your guns, knives, axes, flammable liquids, nail scissors and sundry dangerous items. No questions asked. Just a request to keep away from the personal from now on. All those in favour?

John. Goats used to be very prevalent in the beautiful Forest of Dean. You’ll get the picture of the area by knowing they can walk up almost vertical slopes and eat anything, even gorse one believes. Not so much know, as the wealthy have moved to the forest, and as a result much of it now looks like a manicured lawn. No place for goats there now on those lavishly cared for plots, what !

It was the case in the late 70s that a fellow could motorcycle to many of the remote pubs there, and on entering the bar area, the locals would stop talking and look at you intently. “Here be a stranger to these parts” written all over their faces. There is a museum in Soudley, that tells the foresters story. One of the fellows who set the place up is an old school friend. One of the exhibits was a list of surnames of the forest. There were only about a dozen ! They remained largely cut off that way until the arrival of the railways in the mid 1850s. Because of the terrain, there were no roads, certainly the turnpike didn’t go there. It was all drovers’ paths, and it’s those paths now under tarmac that form the twisty roads they have today.

Well I didn't phrase my last email well. I should have used the word insult. I wasn't prepared to leave here because I couldn't take it, but because I could see the rut one was getting into, well, one prefers robust intelligent debate. And let me face it, I would never get that at all from Madame.

Well, that's settled, then. Aye to William's motion as well. But where knitting is concerned, I'm a tough and independent man, a seasoned tractor trailer driver who faces all challenges bravely, alone and with a scowl and a Clint Eastwood-esque squint. So, back to Miss MysticNails and her YouTube video on how to put tassels to the mess of a scarf I knitted.

Lord LavendonIs that you or one of your relatives posting? I know this has happened previously and your recent posts have an unfamiliar edge to them.

No matter. There was no apology for my post - to anyone.

Its not for me to speak for cressida but it is not my impression "she wants everyone to show absolute dedication and obedience to the faith."

She is a Christian, so the comparison with Islamic Jihadists is irrelevant and daft. And she does not single out Jewish lesbians! From my experience it is double standards and hypocrisy which get her going - hence her attacks on the Inspector for some of his more, shall we say, somewhat unusual and extreme views. She fights and fights hard.

What was concerning was Hannah attempting to use similar tactics. Cutting irony and sarcasism is not for everyone.Her post of 13 November 2012 @ 22:11, for example, and then her declaration of "surrender" and "defeat".

WilliamSorry, I retain my right to full freedom of expression and will accept no gagging arrangements.

Goodness, Dodo, don't make stuff up. What Carl said is that if you talked dirty to his twenty-something year-old daughter as you did to one of the young ladies here...Misses Cressida or Hannah, can't remember which...he'd grease your arse with a shotgun-full of salt shot. That would be a policy statement, not a threat.

All sensitive intelligent believers have moments or periods of doubt or uncertainty about their faith and may even consider the possibility there isn't a God. If they deny this they are liars or are very scary people to avoid. Even great saints like St Theresa de Avila and St. John of the Cross admitted this... So did Mother Teresa in a letter to a friend. I doubt if normal,good devout people ever have these doubts or periods of skepticism becuse they are busy with their lives and live their faith every day. Their faith never wavers.

During the worst days of the USA Civil War Abraham Lincoln was asked if he thought God was on the side of the Union. Here was his answer:

"Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right"

And...

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

Hannah @ 18.57, Treachery? Never! On first reading your post @ 22.57 this communicant was quite taken a back. Handing Mlle de Ville such an easy victory? Telling her 'you have won'? Fatal error, and this communicant's first instinct was to tell you to get a grip in no uncertain terms.

Now bluedog's guide to bitch management is quite explicit; never take a backward step and never show that you are hurting. Some people are emotionally carniverous and feed on any signs of weakness. As your uncle points out it's a sign of insecurity, but very destructive.

17:54ZzzzzzzzzzzThis must be Lord loosa the moronic relative that is allowed of out the attic sometimes to write under LL's avatar.

19:27As if ..Another lie

Now if only Miss Mystic Nails could join this site. Hannah would have someone else to irritate .She couldunravel Mystic's knitting for fun and when she gets poked in the eye with a knitting needle she could shriek that she is being persecuted because she is a jewish lesbian,and manufacture hurt feelings.

The truth is a steam roller could run over Hannah and she would not feel a thing. Scary!

Dodo, you discussed p...p...p...oh my poor ears and whiskers. Anyway, salt shot isn't too bad; you'd live. Caught a bit of it on my butt and legs from a watchman when a bunch of us urchins were stealing peaches from an orchard on the outskirts of Prague. Hurts like a son of b...., the salt does, and the only way to get relief for some reason is to soak the affected body part in diluted vinegar. What's with the Brazillian nuts, btw? I miss the alusion.

I can predict every move you will make.One of the few situations where text book theory applies.You are a natural at this and I know you have had lots of experience . I'm not your first victim by a long shot.It's fascinating to watch you operate.

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

Ok, not a belly-buster, but there's something about it. All right, enough of this, lock and load...

A Jewish kid is sent to a Jewish school by his parents. After two weeks he is kicked out for fighting and laziness.

So his parents raise the money and send him to a private school. However, after two weeks he is kicked out for fighting and laziness.

Having no choice, the parents send the kid to a public school. However, after just one week he is suspended for fighting, lateness and laziness.

His parents feel terrible. What to do, what to do! Finally they decide there is only one thing more they can do. So they enroll him in a Catholic school. Weeks go by and the boy is still in school. In fact, he has good grades and the nuns speak well of him. His parents are amazed. They ask the kid, "How is it you got kicked out of Jewish school, out of private school and out of public school but you don't get kicked out of Catholic school?" "You should see," says the kid, "what they have hanging on the wall."

Patricia was a devout Christian and was worried at how little her class knew about religion, so decided she was going to teach some religion.

She told her class that she would run a contest. She would give $100 to whoever could tell her who was the greatest man who ever lived.

Immediately Johnny began to wave his hand, but Patricia ignored him in favour of those in her Sunday school class. As she went around the room, she was disappointed with the answers she got. Drew picked Noah because he saved all the animals. Others said, "I think the greatest man who ever lived was Alexander the Great because he conquered the whole world." and "I think it was Thomas Edison, because he invented the light bulb."

Finally, she called on Johnny who still had his hand in the air. "I think the greatest man who ever lived was Jesus Christ." said Johnny.

Patricia was shocked and gave him the $100 reward. As she did so, she said, "Well, Johnny, I'm very surprised that you should be the only one with the right answer.How come?"

"Well, to tell you the truth," Johnny replied as he pocketed the money, "I think it was Moses, but business is business."

Q: How can you tell if you're in a Gay church?A: Only half the congregation is kneeling.

Q: How does a Jew celebrate Christmas?A: He installs a parking meter on the roof.

Q: What's the difference between a Catholic wife and a Jewish wife?A: A Catholic wife has real orgasms and fake jewelry.

A Catholic boy and a Jewish boy were talking and the Catholic boy said, "My priest knows more than your rabbi." The Jewish boy said, "Of course he does, you tell him everything."

And to close off,

Billy: 'My wife got me to believe in religion.' Joe: 'Really?' Billy: 'Yeah. Until I married her I didn't believe in Hell.

There are 3 fundamental truths about religion: Jews don't recognize Jesus as the Son of God,Protestants don't recognize the Pope as the Vicar of Christ, and Baptists don't recognize each other at the bar on Saturday nights.

It was a metaphor, Dodo. A shotgun with rock salt is a very common metaphor for pervertus interruptus.

Posting comments on pubic hair fashion is not "talking dirty", nor is it reasonable grounds for loading a shotgun.

It is however completely inappropriate for a 60 year-old man to talk about such things with a 26 year-old woman he knows only casually. People will infer all kinds of things about your motives and all of them will be justified. Because you see people (for some odd reason) tend to associate pubic hair with sex and genitals and erogenous zones. Maybe its just me, but I don't normally start casual conversations with women about sex and genitals and erogenous zones. Such conversations can be both professionally and legally dangerous. Doing so at work for example would be a really good way for me to get charged with sexual harassment and discharged.

Reasonable people know this. That's why reasonable people don't normally engage in conversations about pubic hair in casual conversation. They fear people people might think they are sleazy old perverts. And start looking for that rock salt. And a shotgun. Because they know there isn't a jury alive that would convict.

4:50 CarlTo be fair to Dodo, he was extemely disapproving of Hannah's behaviour with the Inspector initially and said so.

He has such a strong affection for Hannah ,he has compromised his own integrity by pretending that the discussion of pubes was acceptableso that she would not appear to be the mindless slut that she so patently is.

I don't have any idea what happened when this subject was first discussed. I didn't see it. I never read it. I only know about it because you mentioned it to Hannah on the 'shotgun' thread. What I remember is Hannah saying she regretted it. What I remember is Hannah apologizing for it. What I remember is Dodo saying a whole bunch of stuff that was anything but disapproving. I am inclined to cut a 26 year-old woman some slack -especially since she appeared to learn from it. But a 60 year-old man should know better.

As for the rest ... do you really think you can hurt me by attacking the character of my daughters? It just makes you look small and vindictive. Many will read that post and wonder not about me or my daughters, but about you. What is the over/under on how long it will take you to delete that post? Like all the other posts you have removed from this thread.

Do you think that you can launch the most savage personal attacks on me without me retaliating in kind?Some will read your initial posts and blanche at the ferocity particularly as there was no provocation. You come across as a psychotic cowardly bully who needs some sort ofapproval to prop up the hollow person you are. As for public opinionfrankly, I don't give damn!

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words never will" as mr Dodo says.

I looked back on this and the pubic hair quote was way back in april and it was in response to Inspector calling me a hairy lesbian, so wasn't even an unprovoked insult.

In fact the specific quote was :

inspector said :

"Anna Anglican. Do stop throwing around ‘homophobic’ like holy water. No one is fearful of homosexuals, more homo critical. You’re very nearly grown up according to your avatar, so lets start behaving like one, what !

By the way, you are not really gay. You are far too pretty. Where, for example, is the excess body hair, unless you are hiding it from us. You are most likely involved in a ‘protection rejection’ complex, but that can be resolved with professional help. For example, do you retain guilt over a run over cat you rescued that eventually died ? If you persist in your lunacy, you may well end up with a fearsome dungaree wearing main battle tank of a dyke for company. A sobering thought that will have part of you weeping with fear..."

Now because I didn't know the inspector like I do now, I got a bit peeved and replied :

"I don't have any 'excess' bodily hair and any 'hair' that is not on my head is waxed on a two week basis- I won't talk about having a Brazillian as it might give Inspector heart failure and as he must be about 160 years old, as with his neanderthal views, we must look after the elderly".

And then later :

"PS- the Brazillian bit was a joke; well trimmned, but not bushy!"

You were not even on that thread, dated Friday 13th April 2012, nor did you rebuke me at that time on that thread. So it is false disgust, brought back now to attack me, in one of your holier than thou fits of pique.

I have already apologised for that remarked and regretted this and other more outrageous postings. Yet you have never once said sorry for any of the hurtful things you said to me, which were not provoked by me, but only by you deciding to lash out at me.

It is strange. You don't like a 26 year old female being on this site. But you are clearly a young female yourself.... so pot, kettle, black ....

I don't know why you are being funny with Dodo , as he has been at pains to attempt to maintain a balance about this and has said he is not taking sides.

I respect Dodo for that and still consider him to be a blogging friend ,because he clearly respects you for being devout in your faith and wants me to go on in mine. It is a pity you can't give him an ounce of credit because he is doing the right thing here.

In any case, that 'is it' from me. I appreciate you will probably want to write a load of more silly stuff in response, but it is rather pointless isn't it? We are going round in circles and as said yesterday I don't want to continue this fight. I am merely trying to tie up a few loose ends here and provide a few bits of clarifications.

You have provoked (apart from this week) every single response to you. I will say this again...I do not want to engage you or your uncle at all. Continue to be insulting if you wishand I will continue to retaliate. It only takes a couple of minutes of my time. If you do not acknowledge my existence through comments or snide innuendo I will do the same. This goes for everyone.Simple.

There are numerous examples of you, releasing unprovoked personal attacks on me & family. This one from June is a good example (I can provide a link and people will note at no time was I attacking or even conversing will Cressida, it was nothing more than a vile personal attack) :

"Hiiiii Dodo

I have been staying at my Uncle's house for the last couple of days. He has been giving me lots of glasses of wine and we are having pizza tonight. Tomorrow we are having chicken vindaloo takeaway. Uncle likes me to run my hands through his thinning hair and sing to him. His favourite is Mambo Italiano and mine too. I have noticed that he pants and perspires a lot when I sing this.I think I am loosing my mind. Uncle thinks he is loosing his too. We are both loosing our minds. I am also loosing a lot of things lately. This could affect my employment as an astronaut."

I guess I had better let you out of your misery and agree to no more of your insults. As my sister said to me, a dose of your own medicine for a couple of days and you will not like it.Most bullies don't. So I agree to no more insults.

About His Grace:

Archbishop Cranmer takes as his inspiration the words of Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘It’s interesting,’ he observes, ‘that nowadays politicians want to talk about moral issues, and bishops want to talk politics.’ It is the fusion of the two in public life, and the necessity for a wider understanding of their complex symbiosis, which leads His Grace to write on these very sensitive issues.

Cranmer's Law:

"It hath been found by experience that no matter how decent, intelligent or thoughtful the reasoning of a conservative may be, as an argument with a liberal is advanced, the probability of being accused of ‘bigotry’, ‘hatred’ or ‘intolerance’ approaches 1 (100%).”

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The cost of His Grace's conviction:

His Grace's bottom line:

Freedom of speech must be tolerated, and everyone living in the United Kingdom must accept that they may be insulted about their own beliefs, or indeed be offended, and that is something which they must simply endure, not least because some suffer fates far worse. Comments on articles are therefore unmoderated, but do not necessarily reflect the views of Cranmer. Comments that are off-topic, gratuitously offensive, libelous, or otherwise irritating, may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on any thread does not constitute their endorsement by Cranmer; it may simply be that he considers them to be intelligent and erudite contributions to religio-political discourse...or not.

The Anglican Communion has no peculiar thought, practice, creed or confession of its own. It has only the Catholic Faith of the ancient Catholic Church, as preserved in the Catholic Creeds and maintained in the Catholic and Apostolic constitution of Christ's Church from the beginning.Dr Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1945-1961

British Conservatism's greatest:

The epithet of 'great' can be applied only to those who were defining leaders who successfully articulated and embodied the Conservatism of their age. They combined in their personal styles, priorities and policies, as Edmund Burke would say, 'a disposition to preserve' with an 'ability to improve'.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, PC, FRS.(Prime Minister 1979-1990)

We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC.(Prime Minister 1957-1963)

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.Sir Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can).(Prime Minister 1940-1945, 1951-1955)

I am not struck so much by the diversity of testimony as by the many-sidedness of truth.Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC.(Prime Minister 1923-1924, 1924-1929, 1935-1937)

If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, KG, GCVO, PC.(Prime Minister 1885-1886, 1886-1892, 1895-1902)

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.Benjamin Disraeli KG, PC, FRS, Earl of Beaconsfield.(Prime Minister 1868, 1874-1880)

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.Sir Robert Peel, Bt.(Prime Minister 1834-1835, 1841-1846)

I consider the right of election as a public trust, granted not for the benefit of the individual, but for the public good.Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool.(Prime Minister 1812-1827)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.The Rt Hon. William Pitt, the Younger.(Prime Minister 1783-1801, 1804-1806)